Reading what you wrote reminds me that I probably would have written a reply similar to yours ten years ago. But what I have learned about patents since then has made me change my opinion.
You are right that the longer "protection" time makes copyright worse than patents. And I think that copyright - as it has become in recent years - is a crime against humanity, as it locks up what should be the common cultural heritage that we all (in particular creative people) should be free to build upon. The way copyright is today stiffles our cultural development just as much (or more) as patents stiffle innovation.
But you have to be aware that most innovation today builds upon innovation made only a few years ago. So even a 20 year monopoly is way too long, if we want to ensure that the patent system does not stiffle innovation. And when we take into account both the time to get a patent and the cost of the patent system, it is getting really hard to argue that patents are helping innovation or our economy today.
My point is that when the government issues monopolies in the market (as patents are), the government is actually working against the free market.
Of course it isn't quite as simple as I state it here. There are some arguments for patents that look good on the surface.
One of these arguments often seen in the mainstream media is the idea of the lone inventor who gets a patent to protect his investment in the research and development he has done, so he will not be ripped off by large corporations. But in reality the lone inventor is usually ripped off anyway. The reason for this is the cost of a patent infringement case. Only rarely such a case costs less than a few million US$. How many lone inventors have a war-chest of a few million US$ to take a patent infringement case to court?
There is an economic incentive for patent offices to issue as many patents as possible. And there is an economic incentive for patent lawyers to have as many patents as possible issued and for the patent case law to be as complicated as possible.
And today the patent system is so complicated that very few people except those who work professionally with it (patent offices and patent lawyers) actually understand it. This means that patent offices can extrend patentable subject matter and patent lawyers can make patent case law more complicated. And those who are supposed to keep the system in check (our democratically elected representatives) are unable to do anything about it, as they do not understand the system.
The recent US Supreme Court decision is a minor setback to this. But it does not fundamentally change this corrupt system.
You are right. But without a licence to the patent on "a hammer" you will be unable to produce "a hammer with a really cool grip".
Of course you could try to get a compulsory license to the "a hammer" patent if the patent holders of this patent wants an extortionate amount of money in license fees. But this could take a long time to get, and you would not even be sure to get it. So most businesses would abandon their R&D on "a hammer with a really cool grip" because of the uncertain future for the product.
Other times, someone patents "the way it's done" and the result is, when you try and find another way to do it, you actually find a better way.
Yes, like when ogg-vorbis was created as a free replacement for the patented mp3. The problem, however, is that those who have the patents for mp3 are still saying that ogg-vorbis is violating some (unspecified) of their patents, so almost no commercial entity has dared support this new and better format.
Originally I was only against patents on software and business methods. But after spending years learning more about patents and how they work in the so-called free market, I now think that it is time to completely abolish the patent system.
Patents are government-issued monopolies. Monopolies are incompatible with a free market.
And if you look at patent infringement cases, you will see that most cases are used to shut down new and innovative competitors in the market.
So the current state of patents today is that they stiffle both the free market and new innovation.
Check out article 52 in the European Patent Convention.
It basically says that business methods and software is not patentable "as such".
When the European Patent Office released their first guidelines on how the European Patent Convention was to be interpreted, the guidelines simply stated that software cannot be patented.
Later the European Patent Office has changed their guidelines to say something that can be condensed to something like: "If software does something useful, it is not software "as such", and can thus be patented". This change in their guidelines was done by the European Patent Office with no political discussion or control, and without any change in patent laws or the European Patent Convention.
Then, the European Patent Office started issuing software patents. There are now tens of thousands of software patents issued by the European Patent Office. These software patents are illegal according the the European Patent Convention and the local patent laws of the signatories.
Then, the European Patent Office called for a diplomatic conference to get article 52 in the European Patent Convention changed to make the illegal software patents legalized. This request was denied at the diplomatic conference.
Then, the European Patent Office called for another diplomatic conference with the same request. Their request was denied again.
Then, the European Patent Office started lobbying the European Union for a directive that would force the EU member countries to change their laws to legalize the illegal software patents. A bit strange, since the EU has noting to do with patents (it is under the European Patent Convention, administered by the European Patent Office, which are completely separate). The directive was blocked by the only democratically elected body in the EU (the European Parliament).
So right now there are a lot of patents on software and business methods in Europe. But they are illegal, so they cannot currently be enforced. If somebody tries to enforce a software patent the judge would invalidate the patent, for not being patentable subject matter.
The latest development is that the European Patent Office is now lobbying the EU to get a special patent court that should be over all other european patent courts. The judges here are to come from the European Patent Office. This way they can ensure that their perverted legal theory (software is not software "as such" if it does something useful) becomes the opinion of the highest court instance for patent cases.
As other posters have also pointed out, the "[...] which achieves the protection objective" can be read as though achievement of a protection objective is needed for "technological measures" to be called "effective". However, in the same sentence we can read that even access control or protection by scrambling (which is known not to achieve this objective) is explicitly mentioned as something that can be done to make "technological measures" "effective".
The InfoSoc directive is full of such contradictions. It looks like opposing sides in the legislative process have tried to make as many amendments as possible without thinking about a coherent result.
I worked a lot with this directive when it was about to be implemented into danish law. At that time the only people interested in publicly discussing it were Linux entusiasts, so I discussed it on one of the SSLUG mailing lists.
At one time I even used these contradictions in the directive to propose an amendment (in danish) to the proposed law that would fully implement the directive, but still make it legal to circumvent DRM.
What happened after I posted this was actually quite interesting. Until then our government had been against any exceptions, but early in the morning on the first working day after this was posted, the government released a statement saying something like: "The law has to be interpreted so that it is legal to circumvent DRM, if needed to access a lawfully purchased work on for example a Linux computer."
Although the law text itself was not changed because of this, an explanatory note (important for when the courts have to interpret the law) was attached. When Sweden some time later implemented the directive into their local law, a similar note was incorporated into their law text.
There is a problem with this ruling, as it only takes local law into account, and not the directive. According to the EU "solidarity principle", the interpretation of local laws made because of EU directives should be in line with the directive.
And the InfoSoc directive actually defines "effective technological measures" in article 6.3.
The definition is contrary to common sense. Basically the directive defines "effective technological measures" as "technological measures" used by copyright holders:
3. For the purposes of this Directive, the expression 'technological
measures' means any technology, device or component
that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to
prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subjectmatter,
which are not authorised by the rightholder of any
copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by
law or the sui generis right provided for in Chapter III of
Directive 96/9/EC. Technological measures shall be deemed
'effective' where the use of a protected work or other subjectmatter
is controlled by the rightholders through application of
an access control or protection process, such as encryption,
scrambling or other transformation of the work or other
subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves
the protection objective.
You can only get such perverted definitions if you let the copyright holders write the law!
I'm glad that Finland will not take part in such a perversion.
Whoever modded the parent redundant is wrong. Nobody has made a comment similar to this in this discussion. Probably a moderation abuse, as "-1, Redundant" often escapes metamoderation because metamoderators don't have time to check the entire discussion to see is a post is really redundant.
Anyway, this reminds me of the messages you get from most programs when you try to exit. Some programs even come up with an extra "Are you really sure?".
Lynx has a funny twist on this: If you reply "no" to the prompt, you get a message saying "Excellent!".
I guess that depends on how much you like the idea of a free market.
It is a fact that copyrights are monopolies in the market. Monopolies are incompatible with a free market. If you try to combine these two, piracy is an inevitable result.
IANAL, but couldnt the statements that M$ employees made about Linux infringing XXX many patents be considered slander?
IANAL either.
Judging from the SCO case (where the unspecified claims were based on copyright instead of patents) this is probably not possible in the US.
But most other countries take it very serious when a company tries to distort the market with such claims. In Germany a settlement after a temporary restraining order on Germany meant that SCO could no longer spread their lies in Germany.
Because the law is more protective of the free market in the EU, and because the EU already has it's eye on Microsoft for anti-competitive behaviour, Microsoft risks big trouble in the EU because of their unspecified claims.
Please note that the ruling here is based on human rights. For some reason (left as an exercise to the reader), you cannot sign away your human rights.
So a "you might be watched" policy would not help here, even if signed by the employee. The European Court of Human Rights would simply throw out suct a contract as illegal.
But it might be possible to have a policy saying that the employee must not have private communications or do anything private on the employer's computers and network. This way the employer can monitor under the assumption that nothing private will be found. I would however be very surprised if such a policy could be implemented at an university.
Just to set things straight: The European Convention on Human Rights is not an EU convention as the summary says. The European Convention on Human Rights is a lot older than the EU, and a lot of non-EU countries are bound by it.
And in case you wonder why we have a special european human rights convention when we already have the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: This is similar, but goes a bit further in the areas where it was impossible to gain international concensus in the UN in 1948.
For example, see article 8 in the european human rights
Article 8 - Right to respect for private and family life1
Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
and compare this to the corresponding article in the UN human rights:
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
In Europe, this is a non-issue. I could sign all the non-compete contracts I'd want to, but they don't hold up in court.
I think you are arong that non-compete contracts do not hold in court in Europe. I am under such a non-compete contract, and before signing it I did a bit of legal research.
In Denmark where I live, the law specifically mentions non-compete clauses in employment contracts. They are legal in some circumstances, but there is also a requirement that if used the former employer has to compensate the former employee by paying half his former wage for the duration of the non-compete clause.
If you understand danish, a Google search for "konkurrenceklausul" will give you more information.
I don't think this is possible under US law.
But in most european countries the law is harsher on telling lies in an attempt to distort the market. In the SCO case, a settlement after a temporary restraining order on Germany meant that SCO could no longer spread their lies in Germany.
Patents haven't become high viz enough to be a campaign issue, but I'd love to see an advisory panel of both industry and academic representatives formed to create a better system, and then have Congress vote on that.
One of the important lessons we learned from the european fight over software patents is that there are companies and patent lawyers that are willing to "invest" heavily in lobbying for extending patentable subject matter.
If this issue is decided by Congress, I am sure that the many lobbyists that would be deployed to influence your politicians would mean a patent law amendment saying that even more obvious "ideas" than right now could be patented.
I have a lot more confidence that the US Supreme Court can strike a more reasonable balance between protecting new ideas and protecting the possibility of new innovation. Just like in Europe I think that the current case law in the US has evolved to a point where it is getting hard to find basis for the current case law in the law texts without a lot of word play, and I think this is the problem that the Supreme Court wants to look at.
Personally I think that a better balance on the question of obviousness could be found by thinking about if a person skilled in the art knowing the current state of art at the time of the patent application and the problem at hand, but not the patented solution could device the patented solution in a few hours or days.
Personally, I happen to believe they should have the right, but not being Putin my opinion doesn't count for much.
Actually the russian lawmakers thought the same way.
Effective Sept. 1st. this year, the russian copyright law was changed so that a record company could forbid one or more (or all) of the collection societies from licensing their contents.
The record company simply has to write to the collection society in question, but I do not think that any RIAA member has done that.
Most likely the US is taking this route in an attempt to avoid that non-RIAA recordings are being sold at a lower price than RIAA likes.
When looking for a link, I was shocked to see a new development in this case: Yesterday the ISP in question announced that they decided not to appeal as they had announced they would, and all other major danish ISPs have started blocking allofmp3.com too.
You can read more about this in danish at Piratgruppen.
The court decision is available in PDF format in danish here, and I found an unofficial english translation of the conclusion of the court decision here.
Further analysis of the court decision in danish can be found here.
This also started with a "voluntary" filter, meant to filter out foreign child porn sites. This filter has also blocked perfectly legitimate sites, but it looks like nobody can be held legally responsible for filtering the wrong sites although no courts or judges are involved when new sites are added to the secret filter list.
For the allofmp3.com filtering, IFPI Denmark wants to block the danish public from accessing the allofmp3.com site, although all legal experts agree that it is legal for danish people to buy their music there. So they went to the courts and got an injunction requiring one of the major danish ISPs to block access to the site. The court concluded that because there already was a filtering system in place the ISP could simply use that filtering system to block access to allofmp3.com. Suddenly the filtering system is no longer voluntary.
The court documents in this case (in danish only, sorry) are scary reading. It is obvious that the court knew nothing about technology. For example they consistently refer the DNS as "DSN". And various filtering technologies are discussed, some of which are being held out being as particularly good at blocking "radical political speech", whatever that is.
The political situation in Sweden right now is actually quite interesting. There is a parliamental election in September this year, and the swedish Pirate Party wants to get into parliament.
For small parties in sweden there seems to be a rather fixed ratio between the party member count and the number of votes they get in parliamentary elections. Given the current member count of the swedish Pirate Party, they may get into parliament with a margin of a few thousand votes.
And the polls show that the other parties in Sweden are divided into two blocks of equal size that both want to have government power. So if the swedish Pirate Party gets into the swedish parliament, they may actually be able to decide who is going to form the next government in Sweden.
Christian Engström already gave links to their main pages in both english and swedish. I'd like to add a link to their donation information page (scroll to the bottom for international donations).
Yes, their member count has almost doubled. And for the last few day they have gotten about 1000 new members each day.
With the kind of support this incident has raised, they are now likely to enter the swedish parliament in the elections in september.
Although (still) officially denied, it looks like TPB was raided on the direct order of the swedish Minister of Justice, Thomas Bodström, after pressure from MPAA and the US government. This is highly illegal in Sweden, and the leader of the opposition in the swedish parliament has requested an investigation.
Slashdot Mirror
Reading what you wrote reminds me that I probably would have written a reply similar to yours ten years ago. But what I have learned about patents since then has made me change my opinion.
You are right that the longer "protection" time makes copyright worse than patents. And I think that copyright - as it has become in recent years - is a crime against humanity, as it locks up what should be the common cultural heritage that we all (in particular creative people) should be free to build upon. The way copyright is today stiffles our cultural development just as much (or more) as patents stiffle innovation.
But you have to be aware that most innovation today builds upon innovation made only a few years ago. So even a 20 year monopoly is way too long, if we want to ensure that the patent system does not stiffle innovation. And when we take into account both the time to get a patent and the cost of the patent system, it is getting really hard to argue that patents are helping innovation or our economy today.
You have a good point there.
My point is that when the government issues monopolies in the market (as patents are), the government is actually working against the free market.
Of course it isn't quite as simple as I state it here. There are some arguments for patents that look good on the surface.
One of these arguments often seen in the mainstream media is the idea of the lone inventor who gets a patent to protect his investment in the research and development he has done, so he will not be ripped off by large corporations. But in reality the lone inventor is usually ripped off anyway. The reason for this is the cost of a patent infringement case. Only rarely such a case costs less than a few million US$. How many lone inventors have a war-chest of a few million US$ to take a patent infringement case to court?
You have a really good point here.
There is an economic incentive for patent offices to issue as many patents as possible. And there is an economic incentive for patent lawyers to have as many patents as possible issued and for the patent case law to be as complicated as possible.
And today the patent system is so complicated that very few people except those who work professionally with it (patent offices and patent lawyers) actually understand it. This means that patent offices can extrend patentable subject matter and patent lawyers can make patent case law more complicated. And those who are supposed to keep the system in check (our democratically elected representatives) are unable to do anything about it, as they do not understand the system.
The recent US Supreme Court decision is a minor setback to this. But it does not fundamentally change this corrupt system.
Of course you could try to get a compulsory license to the "a hammer" patent if the patent holders of this patent wants an extortionate amount of money in license fees. But this could take a long time to get, and you would not even be sure to get it. So most businesses would abandon their R&D on "a hammer with a really cool grip" because of the uncertain future for the product.
Yes, like when ogg-vorbis was created as a free replacement for the patented mp3. The problem, however, is that those who have the patents for mp3 are still saying that ogg-vorbis is violating some (unspecified) of their patents, so almost no commercial entity has dared support this new and better format.
Originally I was only against patents on software and business methods. But after spending years learning more about patents and how they work in the so-called free market, I now think that it is time to completely abolish the patent system.
Patents are government-issued monopolies. Monopolies are incompatible with a free market.
And if you look at patent infringement cases, you will see that most cases are used to shut down new and innovative competitors in the market.
So the current state of patents today is that they stiffle both the free market and new innovation.
Check out article 52 in the European Patent Convention.
It basically says that business methods and software is not patentable "as such".
When the European Patent Office released their first guidelines on how the European Patent Convention was to be interpreted, the guidelines simply stated that software cannot be patented.
Later the European Patent Office has changed their guidelines to say something that can be condensed to something like: "If software does something useful, it is not software "as such", and can thus be patented". This change in their guidelines was done by the European Patent Office with no political discussion or control, and without any change in patent laws or the European Patent Convention.
Then, the European Patent Office started issuing software patents. There are now tens of thousands of software patents issued by the European Patent Office. These software patents are illegal according the the European Patent Convention and the local patent laws of the signatories.
Then, the European Patent Office called for a diplomatic conference to get article 52 in the European Patent Convention changed to make the illegal software patents legalized. This request was denied at the diplomatic conference.
Then, the European Patent Office called for another diplomatic conference with the same request. Their request was denied again.
Then, the European Patent Office started lobbying the European Union for a directive that would force the EU member countries to change their laws to legalize the illegal software patents. A bit strange, since the EU has noting to do with patents (it is under the European Patent Convention, administered by the European Patent Office, which are completely separate). The directive was blocked by the only democratically elected body in the EU (the European Parliament).
So right now there are a lot of patents on software and business methods in Europe. But they are illegal, so they cannot currently be enforced. If somebody tries to enforce a software patent the judge would invalidate the patent, for not being patentable subject matter.
The latest development is that the European Patent Office is now lobbying the EU to get a special patent court that should be over all other european patent courts. The judges here are to come from the European Patent Office. This way they can ensure that their perverted legal theory (software is not software "as such" if it does something useful) becomes the opinion of the highest court instance for patent cases.
As other posters have also pointed out, the "[...] which achieves the protection objective" can be read as though achievement of a protection objective is needed for "technological measures" to be called "effective". However, in the same sentence we can read that even access control or protection by scrambling (which is known not to achieve this objective) is explicitly mentioned as something that can be done to make "technological measures" "effective".
The InfoSoc directive is full of such contradictions. It looks like opposing sides in the legislative process have tried to make as many amendments as possible without thinking about a coherent result.
I worked a lot with this directive when it was about to be implemented into danish law. At that time the only people interested in publicly discussing it were Linux entusiasts, so I discussed it on one of the SSLUG mailing lists.
At one time I even used these contradictions in the directive to propose an amendment (in danish) to the proposed law that would fully implement the directive, but still make it legal to circumvent DRM.
What happened after I posted this was actually quite interesting. Until then our government had been against any exceptions, but early in the morning on the first working day after this was posted, the government released a statement saying something like: "The law has to be interpreted so that it is legal to circumvent DRM, if needed to access a lawfully purchased work on for example a Linux computer."
Although the law text itself was not changed because of this, an explanatory note (important for when the courts have to interpret the law) was attached. When Sweden some time later implemented the directive into their local law, a similar note was incorporated into their law text.
There is a problem with this ruling, as it only takes local law into account, and not the directive. According to the EU "solidarity principle", the interpretation of local laws made because of EU directives should be in line with the directive.
And the InfoSoc directive actually defines "effective technological measures" in article 6.3.
The definition is contrary to common sense. Basically the directive defines "effective technological measures" as "technological measures" used by copyright holders:
You can only get such perverted definitions if you let the copyright holders write the law! I'm glad that Finland will not take part in such a perversion.
Whoever modded the parent redundant is wrong. Nobody has made a comment similar to this in this discussion. Probably a moderation abuse, as "-1, Redundant" often escapes metamoderation because metamoderators don't have time to check the entire discussion to see is a post is really redundant.
Anyway, this reminds me of the messages you get from most programs when you try to exit. Some programs even come up with an extra "Are you really sure?".
Lynx has a funny twist on this: If you reply "no" to the prompt, you get a message saying "Excellent!".
I guess that depends on how much you like the idea of a free market.
It is a fact that copyrights are monopolies in the market. Monopolies are incompatible with a free market. If you try to combine these two, piracy is an inevitable result.
Judging from the SCO case (where the unspecified claims were based on copyright instead of patents) this is probably not possible in the US.
But most other countries take it very serious when a company tries to distort the market with such claims. In Germany a settlement after a temporary restraining order on Germany meant that SCO could no longer spread their lies in Germany.
Because the law is more protective of the free market in the EU, and because the EU already has it's eye on Microsoft for anti-competitive behaviour, Microsoft risks big trouble in the EU because of their unspecified claims.
So a "you might be watched" policy would not help here, even if signed by the employee. The European Court of Human Rights would simply throw out suct a contract as illegal.
But it might be possible to have a policy saying that the employee must not have private communications or do anything private on the employer's computers and network. This way the employer can monitor under the assumption that nothing private will be found. I would however be very surprised if such a policy could be implemented at an university.
And in case you wonder why we have a special european human rights convention when we already have the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: This is similar, but goes a bit further in the areas where it was impossible to gain international concensus in the UN in 1948. For example, see article 8 in the european human rights
and compare this to the corresponding article in the UN human rights:In Denmark where I live, the law specifically mentions non-compete clauses in employment contracts. They are legal in some circumstances, but there is also a requirement that if used the former employer has to compensate the former employee by paying half his former wage for the duration of the non-compete clause.
If you understand danish, a Google search for "konkurrenceklausul" will give you more information.
I don't think this is possible under US law. But in most european countries the law is harsher on telling lies in an attempt to distort the market. In the SCO case, a settlement after a temporary restraining order on Germany meant that SCO could no longer spread their lies in Germany.
One of the important lessons we learned from the european fight over software patents is that there are companies and patent lawyers that are willing to "invest" heavily in lobbying for extending patentable subject matter.
If this issue is decided by Congress, I am sure that the many lobbyists that would be deployed to influence your politicians would mean a patent law amendment saying that even more obvious "ideas" than right now could be patented.
I have a lot more confidence that the US Supreme Court can strike a more reasonable balance between protecting new ideas and protecting the possibility of new innovation. Just like in Europe I think that the current case law in the US has evolved to a point where it is getting hard to find basis for the current case law in the law texts without a lot of word play, and I think this is the problem that the Supreme Court wants to look at.
Personally I think that a better balance on the question of obviousness could be found by thinking about if a person skilled in the art knowing the current state of art at the time of the patent application and the problem at hand, but not the patented solution could device the patented solution in a few hours or days.
Actually the russian lawmakers thought the same way.
Effective Sept. 1st. this year, the russian copyright law was changed so that a record company could forbid one or more (or all) of the collection societies from licensing their contents.
The record company simply has to write to the collection society in question, but I do not think that any RIAA member has done that.
Most likely the US is taking this route in an attempt to avoid that non-RIAA recordings are being sold at a lower price than RIAA likes.
When looking for a link, I was shocked to see a new development in this case: Yesterday the ISP in question announced that they decided not to appeal as they had announced they would, and all other major danish ISPs have started blocking allofmp3.com too.
You can read more about this in danish at Piratgruppen.
The court decision is available in PDF format in danish here, and I found an unofficial english translation of the conclusion of the court decision here.
Further analysis of the court decision in danish can be found here.
This also started with a "voluntary" filter, meant to filter out foreign child porn sites. This filter has also blocked perfectly legitimate sites, but it looks like nobody can be held legally responsible for filtering the wrong sites although no courts or judges are involved when new sites are added to the secret filter list.
For the allofmp3.com filtering, IFPI Denmark wants to block the danish public from accessing the allofmp3.com site, although all legal experts agree that it is legal for danish people to buy their music there. So they went to the courts and got an injunction requiring one of the major danish ISPs to block access to the site. The court concluded that because there already was a filtering system in place the ISP could simply use that filtering system to block access to allofmp3.com. Suddenly the filtering system is no longer voluntary.
The court documents in this case (in danish only, sorry) are scary reading. It is obvious that the court knew nothing about technology. For example they consistently refer the DNS as "DSN". And various filtering technologies are discussed, some of which are being held out being as particularly good at blocking "radical political speech", whatever that is.
But perhaps you live in a world where the musicians starve if they do not pay what the collecting societies wants...?
For small parties in sweden there seems to be a rather fixed ratio between the party member count and the number of votes they get in parliamentary elections. Given the current member count of the swedish Pirate Party, they may get into parliament with a margin of a few thousand votes.
And the polls show that the other parties in Sweden are divided into two blocks of equal size that both want to have government power. So if the swedish Pirate Party gets into the swedish parliament, they may actually be able to decide who is going to form the next government in Sweden.
Christian Engström already gave links to their main pages in both english and swedish. I'd like to add a link to their donation information page (scroll to the bottom for international donations).
The idea of an "eather" may not be that far-reached. Process physics predicts absolute motion.
And the second swedish TV channel has been reported to cover the demonstration on national TV.
With the kind of support this incident has raised, they are now likely to enter the swedish parliament in the elections in september.
Although (still) officially denied, it looks like TPB was raided on the direct order of the swedish Minister of Justice, Thomas Bodström, after pressure from MPAA and the US government. This is highly illegal in Sweden, and the leader of the opposition in the swedish parliament has requested an investigation.